The Da Vinci Code Killed a Woman?

Since the Da Vinci Code was first published, it has sold more than 60 million copies, centres on a sinister plot by Catholic organisation Opus Dei to kill the book's hero Robert Langdon before he discovers, via clues in Da Vinci's paintings, that Christ was married to Mary Magdalene and had a son.

Caroline Eldridge, a 38 year old graduate student from of the Wimbledon College of Art and prominent art critic and painter, killed herself because she was convinced of an aspiring plot against her love. Apparently Eldridge had been studying Da Vinci's art when she stumbled upon The Da Vinci Code. She then became obsessed with Da Vinci's paintings and the mysteries that had surrounded his work. She was so obsessed with the mysteries that she started to suffer delusions about her and her family being in grave danger because she had information on Leonardo after working on an exhibition about his paintings. While studying Da Vinci in Rome, she had a particular interest in his famous Vitruvian Man drawing, which features on the cover of The Da Vinci Code. A dying murder victim in the Dan Brown novel also arranges his body in the shape of the drawing as a complex clue for investigators.

Eldridge had no prior signs of mental illness, except for a slight case of anorexia when she was a teenager. According to her father, Eldridge had become delirious in Rome, so he father flew to Italy to bring her back home. When Mr. Eldridge found his daughter in Rome, she was working long hours in a panic state of mind designing costumes in the wee hours of the night, so Mr. Eldridge was able to bring his daughter home. Mr Eldridge and his wife Susan referred her to a doctor and she was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and sent to a psychiatric unit at Wotton Lawn hospital in Gloucester.

After a month in the psychiatric unit, Ms. Eldridge was sent home, but still had delusions about a plot against her. Then on May 25, while staying with a group of friends, Eldridge complained of having stomach cramps and not felling well, and eventually admitted to her friends that she had taken an overdose. She was taken to Cheltenham General Hospital but died of multiple organ failure on May 31.